Cold Fear (7 page)

EIGHT

Emily slipped
into a fitful sleep in
Doug’s arms as the eastern horizon awoke with predawn light. The rangers had
draped blankets over them as they sat on the ridge silhouetted against the
peaks.

Portrait of an anguished vigil.

How long had Paige been out there now? Two nights.
Nearly forty-eight hours. It had rained. The rangers said the temps had ranged
from the seventies to the mid-forties at night. Emily was certain Paige had a
sweater. She also had Kobee and some food. Most importantly, her wits. Could their
daughter save her own life? Stay put, Paige. Doug whispered advice. Do not
travel; build a shelter. Stay put. Stay warm and dry. She had Kobee. They were
bringing in dogs. They should be able to pick up Kobee. But there were bears
out there.

Oh Jesus.

Doug rubbed a hand across his whiskers. How could he
just let her go off? He should have known better. He was a teacher. He just
lost control. Lost it. Over this trip. Over Emily. Over everything. He wanted
it to end. He just lost control. His hand hurt, throbbed. He had the ax. He
just…how did it come to this? How? Despite Emily’s troubles, they had been
happy. She owned his heart. She was so right for him. He always thought so,
ever since he first set eyes on her.

He was a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps, among the
first forces about to be deployed from Pendleton to trouble in the Eastern Hemisphere. Emily was a photographer, stringing for
Newsweek
, sent down from
San Francisco to join the news hordes profiling “a day in the life” of his
unit. Doug did not even notice her when she first arrived. Just another member
of the press to be baby-sat, to be briefed on the mission, to be introduced to
the members and afforded access. Even to personal quarters. Doug punctuated
every part of the tour with his gruffest, hard-ass “Any questions?” Translated,
it meant if you voiced one, you were going to be made to look stupid. So none
were asked, until halfway through the day.

“I have one, Sergeant?” Emily said.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Why would a guts-and-glory warrior like yourself have a
copy of
Paddle-to-the-Sea
in his locker?”

Doug was at a loss and Emily’s camera caught it. After
snapping the picture, she lowered her camera, revealing the most engaging,
charming smile he had ever seen. He knew then that this woman had captured his
heart.

The next evening, she agreed to go for a walk with him
along the beach. While looking out at the Pacific, he told Emily he was
preparing to leave the Corps and finish his college degree in English
Literature so he could teach. The picture book
Paddle-to-the-Sea
was on
the study list of one of his correspondence courses, along with classics like
Crime
and Punishment
and Homer’s
The Odyssey.
As luck would have it, he
told her, he was accepted at Golden State in San Francisco.

“Well, I’ll have to show you my studio.” Emily grinned,
bouncing her eyebrows. “Look me up when you get there, soldier.”

He did.

They were married a few years later. They had chemistry,
but Emily always had an opaque air about her, a sadness that she would not talk
about. She would close herself off. Doug could handle that. Theirs was a good
life. He got a teaching job at a high school. Her photography work was steady.
They had Paige, beautiful and with an eye for details, like her mother. They
had a good life. Emily only began withdrawing recently.

Doug watched the morning sun paint the Rockies.

He had figured Emily’s problems were related to her
childhood here and the deaths of her parents. She would not, or could not, open
up to him. She guarded her past, and despite his delicate probing, Doug was
unsuccessful in learning more about that dark period of her life. At least she
was getting counseling. It seemed to be working. Doug was counting on this trip
to help resolve things. They were in this together.

If only the thing tormenting Emily were something alive,
he would kill it for her. But how do you kill ghosts? He was powerless. It ate
him up. Once they arrived, Emily infuriated him with her unwillingness or
inability to tell him exactly what was the source of her anguish. They had come
here to resolve things and still she held back. Until the other night. Dropping
the mother of all loads on him:
She has a sister
. Then she clammed up.
Instead of understanding, supporting her first major step to talk to him, he
began an argument the next day. Emily walked off, headed up the trail to be
alone to contemplate. It pissed him off further. So what did he do? Grabbed his
ax, chopped wood like a madman, and took it out on Paige. He was furious with
Emily. All Paige wanted to do was talk to him, but he screamed in her face
until he wounded himself, then terrified her and chased her into the woods.
Chased
her with an ax in my hand!
Ordering her away until she vanished into the Rocky Mountains.
How could I be so stupid? So cruel?

Oh Christ. Paige, I am so sorry.

Doug ran his hand over his face. His heart feeling as if
was about to shatter into a million pieces. He could hear the distant thumping
of an approaching helicopter. Then he smelled fresh coffee and noticed a cup
was being offered to him. By Pike Thornton.

“Thanks.” Doug took a needed sip.

Thornton
studied him from the
brim of his cup.

“This chopper could be the FBI.”

Doug’s eyes met Thornton’s and he did not like the way
the old ranger was assessing him. So poker-faced.

“Doug, if there’s anything you want to talk about,
anything that’s been troubling your mind--” the chopper grew louder--“now would
be a good time to do it.”

NINE

U.S. Marshal
Rooster Cogburn
squinted through his good eye and shouted across the plain at the outlaw Ned
Pepper and his gang.

“I aim to kill you in one minute, Ned. Or see you hanged
in Fort Smith at Judge Parker’s convenience. Which’ll it be?”

Pepper surveyed the odds of three against one, smiling.
“I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!” Pepper shouted back.

Special Agent Tracy Bowman pointed her remote at the TV,
freezing the videotape. She turned to Mark, her nine-year-old son, slouched
beside her on the couch, his hand resting in a nearly empty bowl of popcorn.

John Wayne’s
True Grit
was their favorite movie;
Rooster’s standoff with Ned Pepper’s gang their favorite part, the next line,
their favorite line. It was a ritual with Mark’s dad to stop the movie at this
point to say the words together. Since his death a few years ago, Bowman kept the
tradition.

Mark’s bright eyes widened to respond to Pepper’s
taunting of Rooster as she chimed with her son:

“Fill your hands you sonofabitch!”

Then Rooster said the line, commencing the shoot-out
with Pepper’s gang. Bowman smiled. It was another quiet night at home--just the
two them, with the lights dimmed, watching the movie in the living room of
their modest home on a few acres outside of Lolo, Montana. Seeing the movie
light flicker on Mark’s face warmed her heart. She saw so much of Carl in him.
How anguished those first months had been for her after Carl’s death. Dreaming
of him, reaching for him. Waking alone in their bed. She went through the
motions of living without him. As months passed, her clothes gradually got
pushed to the empty side of the closet. God, she missed him. Some days at home,
she wore his old shirts that she had saved, loving how they still held his
cologne, feeling him wrapped around her.

True Grit
was Carl’s
movie.

He had operated a towing business based in Missoula. They were two solitary, shy people who met a lifetime ago it seemed, finding
each other at a car wreck north of Milltown when she was a rookie Montana
Highway Patrol officer. Got married in a little chapel in the valley south of
town, built their own home near the Bitterroot River. Then she had Mark.

A few years later, when she learned the FBI was looking
to hire more agents in Montana, Carl urged her to apply. “You’re as sharp as
the rest of them, Trace.” She was accepted. Scored high during training and
luckily landed a job at the Bureau’s Missoula office downtown on West
Front Street. Sometimes, Carl would meet her for lunch and they’d walk by the
river.

Initially, she worked on government fraud cases,
investigating corruption involving federal contracts, then on environmental
crimes as part of multi-agency task forces.

She was among the dozens of agents who played a minor
part in some of Montana’s big cases--the arrest of the Unabomber near Lincoln, the Freemen standoff near Jordan. Those high-profile files involved agents from
across the United States, and it was in Jordan during the militia operation she
overheard two out-of-state female agents chuckling behind her back about her
size.

After Mark’s birth, Bowman had become some thirty pounds
heavier than she should be for five feet seven inches. Her weight had been a
life-long struggle for her. She pretended she did not hear their remarks, but
they hurt. She tried to shake it off; she knew she was fit, strong, a good,
dedicated agent.

But somebody must have said something up the chain of
command. For not long after the Freemen case ended peacefully with arrests, she
was reminded constantly of fitness requirements and confined to computer work
at her desk, assisting with NHQ on Internet crime.

The Bureau envisioned her post as holding potential to
gather criminal intelligence, but that never really happened. Bowman became a
vehicle for clerical requests made by other agents in the region needing data
from the Internet. She soon tired of it. Many days, when she had little to do,
she sat at her desk, chewing carrot and celery sticks, gazing out her office
window, longing to be freed from office job to do criminal investigative field
work.

Then came the winter night Carl answered a radio call in
a snowstorm. A bus carrying a girls’ basketball team from Wyoming broke down on
Interstate 90, west of Garrison. They had trouble getting someone to come out.
Carl was on the road returning from business in Drummond. But he never made it
home that night. He turned around to help the girls. Not long after he arrived,
a Freightliner hauling Christmas toys for malls in Spokane jackknifed, crashing
into the bus. Carl and one of the girls were killed.

Bowman’s life changed forever that night. She thought
she would never survive but she hung on. For Mark. They helped each other.

It’s okay if you feel like crying a little today,
Mom,
he would tell her in the months after it
happened.

They endured.

After Carl’s death, Bowman’s attempts to escape her desk
job seemed futile, but she did not give up. A few years later, she had shed
some pounds but was still a little overweight. The hell with it, she thought,
she was fit strong and could perform her duties.

Her hope for a change came recently after she took more
training at the Academy. Bowman had an analytical mind that took her to the top
percentile when she completed specialized courses at Quantico in the Violent
Crimes and Major Offenders Program. It covered everything from fugitives to
sexual exploitation of children, kidnappings to assaults against the president.
Bowman was hopeful her course work would make her a candidate for assignment to
Violent Crimes, which had current openings in the Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas divisions.

Just before Carl’s death, Mark was diagnosed with a rare
lung ailment. Those three cities had medical centers specializing in
ground-breaking research on Mark’s condition. It would give Bowman peace of
mind to be close to one of them.

Medication helped Mark’s lungs function properly,
allowing him to live the normal life of a nine-year-old. He loved school,
computers and dinosaurs. They had visited key sites in Montana, Colorado and Alberta. Mark designed his own dinosaur Web site and posted it on the
Internet, which Bowman monitored. You never know what’s lurking out there.

She was expecting to hear word on her applications for
the out-of-town jobs any day now. She was originally from Miles City
and feeling bittersweet about the possibility of leaving Montana. The insurance
claims had long been settled. She had sold Carl’s business. They had a little
money to start a new life. She and Mark both needed a fresh page, she thought,
reaching into the popcorn bowl, watching Duke in all his glory, reins in his
teeth, guns blazing. Bowman’s telephone rang. She grabbed it.

“Tracy, Roger Cole in Billings.”

She sat up. Cole was the resident agent for Montana. “We’ve got a situation and you’re going to be involved. In fact, your name came up
from Washington for this.”

Her mind raced. What could it be?

“It’s a major investigative case out of Glacier
National Park. A California girl missing in the wilderness. Ten years old. But
there may be much more to it. A lot of political buttons have been pushed.
There will be a multi-agency task force. We’ll be working with the National
Park Rangers, County; San Francisco PD is sending a body. We have the lead.
Everything is being marshaled out of Salt Lake. Bowman, your file shows that
before you were an agent and with Montana Highway Patrol, you were a seasonal
ranger at Glacier, correct?”

“Yes, but sir, I don’t quite understand. I am the
Internet GFP person out here.”

“No, as of now, you’ve tentatively got the job at the
Los Angeles Division. But I am sorry Bowman, I have to hold my
congratulations.”

“I don’t understand?”

“Look, I’m not very good at complicated political bull
so I am going to tell you something so far off the record that they will take
my testicles if they knew. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Quantico was very impressed with your recent course
results and so was Los Angeles. The supervisor at Quantico said you were, I’m
reading notes here, ‘blessed with incredible instinct and a natural talent for
dissection.’ You wowed them in the classroom. What I am saying is you have got
the post in California; but unbeknownst to you, NHQ wants to see how you
perform on this one. They picked you for this assignment because you are at the
top the curve. Our offices in Kalispell and Browning are down right now.
Vacation, illness and assignments. At the moment you are the closest available
FBI agent to the scene. Now, do you understand?”

“I do not believe this. I mean, I want Los Angeles for
Mark, but I just can’t--and I am not supposed to know this?”

“Know what?”

“Right.”

“Welcome to politics and policing. Bowman, this case is
likely to attract attention. It is going to be investigated thoroughly from the
outset. The brass does not want to risk having a legendary embarrassment, not
only for us, but for several other agencies. The clock is ticking on this one.”

John Wayne was pinned under his horse. She watched him
reaching for his gun as Ned Pepper neared to finish him off.

“But, sir, a little girl lost in the woods? With all due
respect, aren’t we overreacting? I’m sure the rangers can handle this.”

“I am sure you remember the Yellowstone case not too
long ago.”

“Right.”

“No one wants a replay of that fiasco. The rangers at
Glacier alerted us. There is suspicion that this could be a parental homicide.
There are extenuating circumstances.”

“What sort of circumstances?”

“More details and bodies are coming in. You will be
updated.”

Kim Darby had fallen into a pit and was eye to eye with
an angry rattlesnake.

“Bowman, you will be partnered with Agent Frank Zander
from Violent Crimes at NHQ.”

“I’ve heard that name before.”

“I have to warn you. Zander has a reputation for
building a case against anybody on anything fast. His work has been critical to
some of the big wins in organized crime, terrorism, kidnappings and serials.”

“Is that the warning about him?”

“He’s a lone wolf, not a team player. A first-class prick
void of personality. His wife recently left him.”

Bowman tensed, muttering to herself, “Because of the
prick part, or the personality part?”

“Anything else I should know about him?”

“He is already in the air. He’ll run the show with Salt
Lake and the rangers. You will work with him. Pack for the mountains. Have you
been to Glacier recently?”

Bowman swallowed. “A couple of years ago.” She and Carl
used to go there with Mark.

“Zander’s flying in to Kalispell. You pick him up there,
drive to West Glacier, grab some shut-eye. A chopper will be standing by to
deliver you to the command site at daybreak. We expect the small joint task
force to be assembled, formalize the game plan and then begin immediately.
Understand? We’re pulling people from Great Falls, Helena, Billings, Coeur d’Alene, an army will come up from Seattle and Salt Lake. Lloyd Turner will
supervise. We have to move fast; so much is at stake for everyone involved.”

“Yes sir.”

“Good luck, Tracy.”

Bowman hung up and put her face in her hands.

What had just happened?

Her mind was swirling. She had been given the new job
she needed for Mark’s health, for her peace of mind. But it was conditional she
not drop the ball here on an NHQ file that was a potential career ender. And
she was to work with a man who comes with his own warning label. She had wanted
to be sprung from her office prison, had wanted Violent Crimes, hadn’t she?

Bowman peeked through her fingers to see Kim Darby
bidding farewell to Roster, whose horse reared as he removed his hat and waved
good-bye.

“Well, come see a fat old man some time,” Rooster said
before his horse jumped a fence and galloped in the snow toward the mountains.

Mark had fallen asleep.